England’s second successive defeat at Twickenham came complete with another
controversy over captain Chris Robshaw’s decision-making at a crucial moment
in the game.

With three minutes left, and England trailing South Africa 16-12, England won a penalty some 30 metres out and Robshaw decided to kick for goal rather than aim for an attacking line-out in the corner.

It was the opposite decision to the one Robshaw and his team-mates had taken on several occasions against Australia a week ago, but the end result was the same. When England failed to gather the restart, South Africa were able to run the clock down with ease and seal a narrow 16-15 victory.

Speaking on TV after the match, Robshaw explained his logic. “We’d held on to the ball quite well,” he said. “I thought there would be enough time to go back down there and kick a dropped goal.”

But there were boos at Twickenham and a sense that England might have been overly influenced by the outcry from last week’s game, which they lost by six points after declining three chances to kick at goal in the second half.

Robshaw’s indecision was apparent during a long delay, during which his goal-kicker Owen Farrell seemed to be disagreeing with him. Finally, the kicking tee arrived on the field and Farrell put the ball between the posts, but not before England had lost further time.

England played by far the majority of the rugby in a match where they racked up twice as many carries as their opponents, but failed to breach the try-line. Their head coach Stuart Lancaster — though diplomatic as ever — was clearly frustrated by the inability to turn possession into points.

Asked whether the best team had won, Lancaster replied: “No comment”. Bbut he declined to get involved in the debate over the late penalty. “There are a lot of decisions taken in the course of a match,” he said. “We’ll sit down and review them with the generals and the players on Monday, when the emotion has been taken out of the match.”

South Africa did score the only try, though it was not one that could have been planned in any coaches’ meeting. The break came when the ball went loose in the England 22, and scrum-half Ben Youngs tried to hack it downfield, only for it to cannon off the shoulder of South African winger JP Pietersen and pinball its way back to Willem Alberts, who had only to fall over the line.

England will now play New Zealand on Saturday as they attempt to avoid a whitewash in their three meetings with the southern hemisphere giants. But Saturday’s defeat, which extends England’s winless run against the Springboks to 11 matches, means that they are effectively condemned to a fifth-place seeding as hosts the 2015 World Cup.

And that ensures that one of the major powers of world rugby — either New Zealand, South Africa, Australia or France — will be in their qualification group.